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Society + Culture, "Looking at America's Behavior from the outside"
By James L. Secor  An adage says that eventually the chaser becomes the chased; that is, you turn into what you are trying to get rid of. If a lawman is chasing a criminal for a long, continuous time, he will become like the criminal in his methodology and outlook in gaining his objective.
This is why there are laws restricting the activities of lawmen, especially the FBI and other undercover operatives. Let us assume this is true, at least to observable behavioral characteristics. What have we got in America? We have a government that has abrogated all power to itself. All money handling is centered in the government by big industry and the military. Politicians are involved in graft and bribery while the military-industrial complex buys influence, favor, legislation. All of these people are rich. Very rich. Thus, all of the money is in the hands of the government. This means that the government also holds the keys to economic well-being. This can already be seen by lay-offs, especially the immense lay-offs by the motor industry in the name of fiscal responsibility yet while retaining all managerial staff; for it is believed that only with managerial staff can any work be done. If you want to work, you work for The Man and at The Man's whim. Within this system of collecting all wealth and benison at the top lies a seemingly counter-productive belief that if a person is not working he is not worthy of anything. He is a slacker. He gets nothing, no benefits of any sort from the presiding government. Everyone is supposed to work. How else can you help society and the government? This unformulated social belief, a part of Social Darwinism, creates a situation in which it is necessary to work to get even the minimum necessary for survival. In essence, this becomes forced labor. Serfdom by some because people are being paid, slavery by others because there is not much of a choice in the matter.
Social Darwinism: the people at the top are stronger and better because they are at the top. If you are not successful, you are not of the better sort.  No one wishes to be inferior, so people work . . . and work and work believing that if they work hard enough they will succeed. Since they do not succeed, they are relegated to be not of the better sort. However, there is always the possibility, so no one can afford not to work. Life is like playing the lottery. Nevertheless, no one wants to be of inferior ilk. This is one reason why the military is so very important to this country. The military protects the better, superior ways of the country from others who wish to destroy it. A better way of life is always a threat to those with less. A strong military is important. A strong military is a superior military. Only a superior country with better ways can maintain a superior, better military. As it should: only the strong--superior, better--survive. To be part of this military is to be superior. Otherwise, a person could not be a part of it. To support the best military makes a person proud. The military can be used, too, to spread the better ways of the country to other countries. In a Monarchy, all of the money, all of the industrial and military control is concentrated at the top. Only the rich and better sort inhabits this realm. Everyone else is a serf . . .or a slave. The military is also used, along with paramilitary organizations (police), to control the populace, for there are always dissidents set on destroying the monarchy so they can grasp what their betters have. Harmony is further maintained by the religious nature of a monarchy. It is consecrated by God. The Monarch is God's anointed agent on earth charged with taking care of his chosen people. Not to believe is to be a traitor. The Devil's agents are always out and about, for the Devil is ever after bringing down God's Kingdom and establishing his own hegemony. In a Communist state, all of the money, all of the industrial and military control is concentrated at the top. Only the rich and better sort inhabits this realm.  Everyone is a serf. . .or a slave. The military exists to protect and promulgate the Communist belief of this better way of life, as with Monarchy and the U.S. Within the Communist state and the Monarchy, the populace is repressed, even oppressed. People's freedom of expression is limited; heresy means prison or death. As all media news and pronouncements come from the head of the State, there is little more than propaganda (indoctrination) available to the people who are further limited in what they can read--so much of the outside world is destabilizing and intended to destroy the State. In order to maintain itself, the government must employ spies, informers. In effect, the State spreads paranoia and fear as a means of control. Yet, in order to maintain the semblance of fairness and equitability, the State cynically allows a few liberals to voice their errant beliefs so those same liberal ideas can be refuted and ridiculed. Since someone is allowed to voice his or her disapproval--up to a point--freedom of expression can be seen as existing in this repressed environment. As soon as the liberal expression challenges the government, it is silenced, the police and the military being the arm of control. No one wants to break the law. That means prison or death. In order to insure that harmony is maintained, the populace must be watched. All the time. What is read, what is listened to, what is written, what is watched, what is done on the Internet--all must be observed. An uninformed government is a mismanaged government. An uninformed government is a toppled government. Vigilance is necessary to maintain control, control over the people and the means of production and the economic well-being of the government. The well-being of the government is the well-being of the people. One of the tenets of Communism is that the people should be maintained with what are considered the basics for survival. Everyone being equal, no one should therefore have more than anyone else should. Except the people at the top, the betters, who are representing The People, The Masses. These governmental types know better, what is better for The People, The Masses. That is why they are representatives of the people. In America, in the U.S., the citizens are spied upon and greater leeway for spying is being sought daily. The paramilitary police, the FBI, Homeland Security, the CIA. Your neighbor. Your child.(Kindergartners are told by their teachers it is right and proper that they rat on their parents if they see their parents using marijuana.) All in the name of fear, of a perceived paranoia. What some might call a delusion.  In America, in the U.S., all of the money is concentrated at the top, concentrated and disbursed. In America , in the U.S., the people are expected to live with what is considered the basics for survival.
In America, in the U.S., there is one difference between its government and Communism--though not a Monarchy. That is, the theocratic society it is fast becoming. Communism does not approve of religion. For Communism, the State, the party line is the religion. Not to revere the State is heretical. In America, in the U.S., religion is vitally important. It was vitally important to the Pilgrims and others who came to the New World seeking freedom from religious oppression and persecution. Religion was vitally important to our Founding Fathers, none of whom was Christian. In the 17th century in Salem, Massachusetts, the homegrown variety of religious oppression and persecution so abhorred by the Enlightenment philosophy that helped found this country set off a witch-hunt that ended up in multiple deaths of innocents. In the 1950's, a similar religio-political oppression and persecution occurred under the auspices of Joseph McCarthy and HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee). And it is occurring again. Ultra-religionists are out to destroy all traces of the Devil who influences witches to do their dirty deeds. Believers find unbelievers and expose them. Believers watch for what people are reading, banning books and newspapers and Internet sites and TV in order to put a stop to the spread of Satanism. Coupled with politics, this religious fervor must involve spying because Satanists are focused on destroying the State and the State is God's state. They are terrorists, if you will. The entireties of the state harmony-creating forces are mobilized. Military and paramilitary, Federal police, Homeland Security forces, the CIA, NSA. Paid and unpaid informers. When religion becomes the motivating force in politics, as the Enlightenment philosophers knew, it is no longer religion but political dictatorship. In both cases, Communism and Theocracy, there is oppression and repression, spying and informants. Paranoia. In America, in the U.S., Communism has been the obsessive bugbear to be run to ground, no matter how. In America, in the U.S., the hunting down of Communism is done in the name of Democracy and Christianity with an obsessive fury that, in its methods and its behavior, has become what it is hunting. American Democracy and theology is behaving like a Communist State, a dictatorship. What it hates. No matter what it feels like on the inside. Because protecting the better way requires extraordinary means. To defeat the enemy means meeting him on his own ground, fighting on his terms. Or so they say. In America, in the U.S., the government is fast becoming a Communist dictatorship under the rubric of being a Christian nation. When it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is a duck. Yes?
*Perhaps it should be noted that the author has lived and worked for an extended period of time in a Communist State and can substantiate the claim that to those on the inside, it does not appear that one is living in an oppressive, dictatorial country. It looks and feels "normal." ====================== Jimsecor is a freelance writer who has travelled extensively overseas, especially Japan and China. He has published in all genre and produced several plays over the years and has taught theatre, writing and literature.
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